Anupriya Patel

Anupriya Singh Patel (born 28 April 1981) is an Indian politician, teacher and social worker from the state of Uttar Pradesh who is the President of Apna Dal (Soneylal) party since 2016 and the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry of India since 7 July 2021. She has represented Mirzapur in the Lok Sabha since 2014. She was the Minister of State in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India from 2016 to 2019. She was previously elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly for the Rohaniya constituency of the Legislature of Uttar Pradesh in Varanasi, where she had fought campaigns in alliance with the Peace Party of India and the Bundelkhand Congress from 2012 to 2014.

Life
Anupriya Patel is the daughter of Sone Lal Patel, who founded the Apna Dal (Sonelal) political party that is based in Uttar Pradesh. She belongs to Kurmi community. She was educated at Lady Shri Ram College for Women and Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University, formerly Kanpur University. She has a master's degrees in Psychology and also Masters in Business Administration (MBA), and has taught at Amity.

Career
Patel has been president of Apna Dal since the death of her father in October 2009. In 2012, she was elected as the member of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election for the Rohaniya constituency in Varanasi.

In the 2014 general election, Patel's party campaigned in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi. She was elected as Member of Parliament from Mirzapur constituency. After the election, there were rumours that the two parties would merge but Patel rejected overtures intended to result in that.